The Back Cover

I was looking over the 30 Days, 30 Covers section of the Office of Letters and Light blog, and I realized that I didn’t have a well-written synopsis like the ones featured there. So I wrote one! Dear readers, it stands before you:

The <em> Atlas</em>: the largest spaceship ever built. It’s a mining vessel, a refinery, a manufacturing plant, and a public relations statement all rolled into one massive vehicle, and it’s a shining example of Belt Group’s dominance of the asteroid mining business. With it, the future of their business in an increasingly exploited Solar System is nearly assured.

Until it disappears.

The last people to see it: a group of innocent miners whose livelihood it threatens. Tasked with tracking them down: a monomaniacal corporate troubleshooter. Her boss: a ruthless climber of the corporate ladder. And then there’s the colonial administrator with his own agenda, the simple bureaucrat trapped by events, and an outer system revolutionary leader with a cult of personality as strong as Stalin’s. All of these people, caught up in a conspiracy all of them can influence but none of them can control, must struggle to survive in a Solar System torn asunder by the winds of political and economic change.

Just picture that on the inner cover of the dust jacket or on the back cover of the paperback. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

3 responses to “The Back Cover”

That’s really, really good, Brad. As I’ve been reading through your blog, I’ve been kicking around the notion of offering to be a beta reader, and I think that back cover just sold me. Let me know if I can be of service.

My only critique is the first part of the last sentence, specifically the parts in square brackets:

[All of these people], caught up in a conspiracy [all of them] can influence but none of them can control, must struggle to survive in a Solar System torn asunder by the winds of political and economic change.

I understand what you’re trying to do with each use of “all of,” and I can see why you want to say both of them, but the parallel formulation rubs me a little funny. In trying to brainstorm solutions, here’s what I came up with:

Replace the second “all of” with “each of.”

Rephrase the embedded sentence like this: “caught up in a conspiracy they can all influence, but none of them can control.”

Delete the initial “all of.”

Rephrase the embedded sentence this way: “caught up in a conspiracy they can influence but cannot control”

None of these completely satisfies me, but if I had to choose, I would pick the last one.